Argentina’s reserves and its debts: Central Bank robbery | The Economist

I received the following email from an Econ teacher who wonders if I had any insight on a question posed by one of his students:

The email reads: “I have alittle query i was hoping you could help clear up for me..a year 13 student has asked a question relating to Argentina’s prime minister, Cristina Fernandezde De Kirchner’s, decision to sell the central bank’s dollar reserves to fund part of the country’s decifit against the advice of the director of the central bank who resigned.”

The student’s question is on the following passage from the Economist article above:

Fernández (Argentina’s president”) justified her raid on the reserves by saying that the Central Bank had more than it needed, because they exceeded the size of the monetary base. Economists disagree about what is an appropriate target for the reserves, but Mr Redrado’s view is that a highly dollarised emerging economy like Argentina’s needs an abundance of Treasury bonds (the form in which most reserves are held) as insurance. Even if Ms Fernández might find support from some economists for her argument, her plan to swap the dollar reserves for a non-transferable government bond would not.

The student’s question is: “I do not know what a monetary base is, nor why Argetina needs treasury bonds.”

This article really caught me off guard at first as well. One thing I love about the Economist newspaper is its use of economic jargon that requires a real understanding of the subject to be able to interpret. The first time I read the article, I will be honest I was completely confused as to what the Argentinean president was up to. But after some reflection and rough sketches of graphs on scrap paper, I think I have “translated” the article’s jargon into plain English.

Below is my reply to the teacher and his student:

Hello,

The president of Argentina wants to sell the country’s US dollar reserves, which are held in the form of US treasury bonds, and then use the US dollars she receives to buy Argentinean government bonds in order to finance her own government’s budget deficit. In essence she wants to swap Argentina’s central bank reserves of US debt (considered a very stable and safe asset due to America’s low inflation rate and relative solvency of the US government) for Argentinean government debt (less stable and safe, especially in the wake of the country’s 2002 default on its debt). Argentina’s central bank would then hold fewer transferable, stable US bonds and more “non-transferable”, Argentinean government bonds. And since the bonds represent Argentina’s government debt, the country as a whole reduces its assets and increases its liabilities.

It is important for a developing country like Argentina to keep large reserves of US dollar-denominated assets (i.e. US treasury bonds) in reserve in order to assure foreign investors that the country would be able to stabilize its currency’s value in the face of a currency crisis such as that which Argentina experienced in 2001-2002. If the value of the peso began to decline on foreign exchange markets (due, for instance, to a decline in international investor confidence in the government’s ability to pay the interest on its foreign debt or inflation fears caused by excessive monetary growth or government spending) then the central bank could use its large dollar reserves to intervene in the forex market and stabilize the value of the peso, reestablishing investor confidence and maintaining the government’s ability to attract foreign creditors in the Argentinean bond market. A collapse of the peso would have ripple effects throughout Argentina, driving up imported products and raw materials and causing spiraling inflation, forcing the government to print more money to finance its budget in the face of falling demand for its debt in domestic and international bond markets.

Argentina must be sure to keep its balance sheet (i.e. its liability to asset ratio) in check. Its assets are US government bonds, its liabilities are the Argentinean bonds it issues to finance its budget deficits. If this ratio become too heavy on the liability side, foreign investors and speculators will lose confidence in the both peso and the Argentinean government’s solvency and dump their holdings of Argentinean currency, assets, and bonds, driving interest rates through the roof and the exchange rate through the floor, grinding the economy to a halt.

The article says,

Argentina’s economy is on course to rebound this year and grow at 3-5%. But the government is spending money so fast that this growth will not finance current spending on its own, says Daniel Marx, a former finance minister. Ordinarily, a government faced with a shortfall would turn to domestic and international bond markets. But this has been difficult since Argentina defaulted in 2002.

The country cannot count on private creditors to make up its budget shortfall, so the president is planning to finance her country’s deficit by buying Argentinean bonds with the country’s own US dollar reserves. Such behavior concerns economists because it could send a message to international investors that the country is on the path towards another unsustainable build-up of debt that could culminate in another default and economic collapse. The article is a word of caution to the president that all leaders should heed: balanced budgets are a good idea, and debt is dangerous!

Econstories.tv – A new resource for Econ teachers and students, from Russ Roberts and John Papola

The long awaited rap video from George Mason University’s Russ Roberts featuring the theories of John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek has been released at last!

We’ve heard some decent Econ raps before (remember “Demand, Supply” by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results?) But this song covers all bases in the predominant macroeconomic schools of thought. Keynes and Hayek are brought back to life and their theories pitted against one another in an all out liquor fueled debate on the streets of New York City.

The video was just released this week. It is packed full of theory from the Classical, supply-side school of macroeconomics (represented by Hayek) and the demand-side school (represented, of course, by Keynes). The video includes cameos from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, whose role as bartenders filling Keynes glass reflects their role in the real economy at keeping the money supply and government spending at high levels, fueling economic booms and the eventual busts that result.

Stay tuned to this blog for more feedback on the video, including some graphical analysis and discussion questions for Macro teachers to use in class!

Keynes vs. Hayek: Late Economists Hip-Hop Legacy | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 16, 2009 | PBS.

A major theme of both the AP and IB Economics courses is the long-running debate between the Keynesian, demand-side theories of macroeconomic policy and those of the Classical, supply-side school. Today’s “Great Recession” has revived this debate, which itself dates back to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, when an Englishman and an Austrian could be found at the ideological centers of two different philosophies of the role government should play in the macroeconomy.

John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek were close friends whose views on government’s role differed greatly. Hayek was a classical, laissez faire libertarian who believed that any intervention by government in a nation’s economy disrupted the efficient functioning of the free market and threatened to stifle private enterprise. Keynes, the father, of course, of modern Keynesian economics, believed that free markets left unchecked were vulnerable to the volotile animal spirits of investors and speculators whose often irrational behaviors could create externalities such as unemployment and credit crunches, thereby harming society as a whole.

Paul Solman of PBS (who I recently met at an Economics teachers conference in Washington DC) interviews a modern Keynesian, Robert Skidelsky (Keynes’ biographer) and a neo-classical economist, Russ Roberts (who I also recently met in Richmond, VA).

Just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Government’s Commerce Department provided its first estimate of the country’s 3rd quarter (July-September 2009) gross domestic product or GDP, announcing an estimated annualized quarter over quarter growth of 3.5%. GDP reports are of special interest to countries since they provide an important macroeconomic measurement of how much an economy’s goods & services supply and income has grown, or recessed, compared to the last three calendar months.

Let me try and make the concept of GDP easy to understand and why it is considered perhaps the most important, single macroeconomic measurement.

GDP is simply a calculation that measures the market value (final price) of all the final goods and services produced within the borders of our country. Thus, U.S. GDP includes Toyotas produced in Alabama but excludes Cadillac’s made in Canada. GDP includes all U.S. exports but excludes all U.S. imports since imports, by definition, imports are produced in some other country and are a more direct employment benefit of the foreign country’s GDP.

If you think about it, ultimately our country’s economic satisfaction is best measured by the goods and services that are produced and that we have access to, which is why GDP is the measurement that is synonymous with “economic growth” or growth in goods & services for its citizens. In addition, rising GDP (more goods and services) is the ultimate economic goal of any economy which can best be accomplished through the means of the two other key macroeconomic measurements of employment and productivity, which are not the subject of this particular blog.

Let’s describe how the GDP calculation is made. Each quarter, the Government compares the final value of the domestic goods produced and services rendered in the current quarter to the final value of the goods produced and services rendered in the previous quarter. The calculation then takes the percentage gain, current quarter versus previous quarter, and annualizes the percentage. The comparison is always restated for inflation so that the figures are comparable from one period to the next. For purists, we call this “real GDP” which is the only GDP reported by the media, even though the word “real” is almost always dropped to avoid confusion with the average citizen. For example, the third quarter 2009 U.S. GDP report highlighted a 3.5% GDP annualized growth rate. This means that the second quarter final value of goods and services produced was approximately .87% or 3.5%/4.

Now let me get to my favorite point on GDP, which even many economists lose sight of. GDP growth is precisely the same as income growth! For example, in the second quarter of 2009 we can say that incomes for American households and American citizens grew by 3.5% restated for inflation. Said another way, our country’s purchasing power grew by 3.5% which represents the income to produce the increasing supply of goods and services. You probably never thought about it this way but every time you purchase something, every dollar you spend is going to someone as income, whether it is the workers as wages or benefits, the landlords as rent, a bank that has made a loan as interest income, or to the owners of the business as profits. I tell my students that Real GDP = Real Income and the only question is how that real income is dispersed among owners (profits), workers (employee wages and benefits), lenders (interest), and lessors (rent). Many citizens are unaware that the Government calculates GDP both in terms of the final market value of the goods and services PRODUCED (the “expenditure method”, which is the version that the media uses, as well as how that same production value under the “expenditure method” translates to higher incomes in a GDP version called the “income method”.

I find the preceding paragraph, GDP = Income, to be a break through moment for a lot of citizens, or first time economic students, in truly understanding the value of the GDP measurement. It is easier for most to think in terms percentage growth in income in lieu of a fuzzier wording like GDP percentage growth. Most citizens are surprised to find that our national incomes or GDP, restated for inflation, increased by 17.4% from 2000 – 2007, just prior to the onset of this current recession. This 7-year growth rate in GDP or incomes still equates to a below average historical average performance. More specifically, over the last 7 years our average annual GDP or income growth rate was only 2.2% versus our historical average growth rate of 3.2%. However, the final point of caution is that the GDP or income growth rate is a collective average, thus the growth in GDP or incomes does not indicate how those income gains are accruing to the various socioeconomic classes or professions. That is also a topic of a future blog on “income distribution” or equality.

Discussion Questions:

1. Have you ever thought about substituting the word “income” for “GDP” to understand GDP more simply? Why are the concepts of income and GDP inter-changeable?
2. Which four groups earn the income generated by the production of goods and services?
3. Although GDP has still risen this decade, despite the current severe recession, many analyses show that our nation’s middle class has made virtually no real income gains this decade. How could this be so if GDP = Income and our GDP has grown this decade?

MV=PQ: A Resource for Economic Educators: Some Classroom Resources

Special thanks to Tim Schilling at MV=PQ blog for pointing out the Cleveland Fed’s interesting video series called the “Drawing Board”.

This video introduces the concept of Consumer Price Index as a measure of inflation in the United States, shows how CPI is calculated, and then goes into a bit more detail than perhaps the AP or IB student needs when it introduces a new method of measuring inflation used by the Fed called “median inflation”.

AP and IB students can benefit most from watching up to 4:12. In this first half of the video the CPI is defined, its measurement demonstrated, short-comings discussed and the “core CPI” explained.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does the Bureau of Labor Statistics weight different items included in the measure of the consumer price index? What type of good gets a greater weights than others?
2. What are some of the purposes the CPI figure serves? Why do we care about changes in the price level in an economy?
3. What is one short-coming of the traditional method used for measuring the inflation rate using CPI?
4. Why did the BLS decide exclude oil and food prices from its “core CPI” figure?

At this point in the course, you may find yourself asking, “what is the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics?” It has been a long time since we first defined these terms at the beginning of the course. The purpose of this post is to introduce some basic Macro concepts help clear up the confusing and not so obvious differences between these two areas of economics.

A teacher of mine once explained the difference between micro and macro using the example of a tree and a forest. Microeconomics is the like the study of an individual tree, standing in a thick forest of thousands of individual trees of different species. A microeconomist might study the systems that make an individual tree function efficiently, providing it with the sustanence it needs to thrive in the forest. A macroeconomist, however, will take a broader look at the forest as a whole, and observe how the thousands of trees work together in conjunction with the sun, the soil, the oxygen, nitrogen, and H2O in the environment that make the entire forest function efficiently as one giant organism.

Put literally, the tree is like an individual market. This may be a product market like the market for apples, or a resource market like the market for apple pickers. Microeconomists will study the characteristics of an individual market: the firms and their costs, tradeoffs, challenges presented by competition or the inefficiencies that result from a lack thereof, and the buyers in the market: the alternatives and trade-offs they face, the utility they receive and the decisions they make based on these factors. Microeconomics concerns itself not with the health of the economy as a whole, rather with the individual markets, firms, and consumers within the economy, and the challenges of efficiency and resource allocation faced by those markets.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, studies the health of the economy as a whole. Macro deals with aggregates, or “collections of specific economic units treated as if they were one. ” For example, instead of studying price of a product, as a microeconomist would, a macroeconomist looks at the price level in the whole economy. Whereas a microeconomist looks at supply and demand in a particular market, a macroeconomist studies aggregate supply and aggregate demand, assessing the collective marginal benefit of all consumers and marginal costs of all producers. Instead of quantity supplied, the macroeconomist examines aggregate output, or gross domestic product. Instead of underallocation and overallocation of resources, the macroeconomists concerns himself with unemployment and inflation.

When it comes to the role of government, macroeconomics has a lot more to say about the role a central government should play in managing the economy as a whole. One major theme of microeconomics is that competitive markets, when left alone by government, tend to achieve efficient allocations of resources. You’ll find that in Macro, however, the government often plays a central part in stimulating and slowing down the level of economic activity in the economy, using tools such as fiscal and monetary policy.

Also in macroeconomics, we’ll study in more depth the role that comparative advantage plays in the economic exchanges that take place between nations. International trade also involves the exchange of foreign currencies, which we’ll try to understand by studying exchange rates and the role that governments play in manipulating and controlling the values of their currencies.

Macroeconomics will prove to be particularly relevant to the events going on in the recent turbulent global economy.  If have listened to the news lately you’ve heard world leaders, political pundits and commentators from all political and economic leanings use words like “bailout”, “fiscal stimulus”, “monetary easing”, “deficit spending” and others; all concepts having to do with macroeconomics. In the next few months, you will begin to see the forest through the trees as we take on the exciting  and challenging field of macroeconomics.

Assignment: Using your economics text, attempt to complete the table below. On the left are microeconomics concepts you have already studied as part of the course. In the right column, brainstorm and identify the macro concept that corresponds with each of the micro concepts. For example, in microeconomcis a when there is a decrease in demand price falls and quantity decreases. In macroeconomics, when there is a decrease in AGGREGATE demand, _____________ and _______________ change. See if you can fill in the blanks! If you get stumped, Mr. Welker’s completed version of the table can be viewed by clicking here.

Economics focus: Much ado about multipliers | The Economist

What is the goal of fiscal stimulus during a recession? Is it simply to increase nation’s total income by a certain amount determined by how much a government increases its own spending by? If this were the case, then an $800 billion stimulus package, like the one begun this year in the US, would lead to a total increase in national income of, well, exactly $800 billion.

While such an outcome is possible, it is not the desired outcome of the Obama administration and the economists who have supported the use of expansionary fiscal policy during economic downturns (i.e. the Keynesian school of economists). Keynesians expect that an initial increase in government spending (or a decrease in taxes) will result in households and firms increasing their own consumption and investment, meaning successive increases in spending. The initial change in spending ultimately gets multiplied through further rounds of spending. The total change in national income resulting from an initial change in government spending or taxes depends on the size of the fiscal multiplier. Now, this is where things get tricky! From the Economist:

The size of the multiplier is bound to vary according to economic conditions. For an economy operating at full capacity, the fiscal multiplier should be zero. Since there are no spare resources, any increase in government demand would just replace spending elsewhere. But in a recession, when workers and factories lie idle, a fiscal boost can increase overall demand. And if the initial stimulus triggers a cascade of expenditure among consumers and businesses, the multiplier can be well above one.

The above scenario, where an economy is operating below full-employment and government spending puts the nation’s idle resources to work, creates new income and further increases private spending, is precisely what the Obama team and its economists hope will happen in the US economy soon. A multiplier of above one means the $800 billion will ultimately increase America’s national income by something greater than $800 billion!

The multiplier is also likely to vary according to the type of fiscal action. Government spending on building a bridge may have a bigger multiplier than a tax cut if consumers save a portion of their tax windfall. A tax cut targeted at poorer people may have a bigger impact on spending than one for the affluent, since poorer folk tend to spend a higher share of their income.

Crucially, the overall size of the fiscal multiplier also depends on how people react to higher government borrowing. If the government’s actions bolster confidence and revive animal spirits, the multiplier could rise as demand goes up and private investment is “crowded in”. But if interest rates climb in response to government borrowing then some private investment that would otherwise have occurred could get “crowded out”. And if consumers expect higher future taxes in order to finance new government borrowing, they could spend less today. All that would reduce the fiscal multiplier, potentially to below zero.

Herein lies the controversy about the effectiveness of deficit-financed fiscal stimulus. Several posts on this blog have focused on the neo-classical, supply-side economists’ fears that expansionary fiscal policy financed by government borrowing will drive up interest rates to private borrowers, thereby “crowding-out” private investment, off-setting any expansion in output achieved through government spending. In the Keynesian model, however, it is precisely because interest rates have bottomed out at the “zero bound” (according to Paul Krugman) that government borrowing and spending will not lead to crowding-out, rather could actually increase investors’ willingness to spend (their “animal spirits”) on new capital, actually “crowding-in” private investment.

Alas, the debate continues. The ironic thing is that even years from now, after all of Obama’s stimulus money has been spent, and the US economy is either fully recovered or it is not, we still won’t know how large the fiscal multiplier was, since tomorrow’s economists will find it nearly impossible to isolate the variable of the $800 billion of government spending and determine just how much of America’s growth in income can be attributed to government spending, and how much resulted from automatic stabilizers built-in to help the economy recover on its own during recessions.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do tax cuts for the rich tend to have a smaller multiplier effect than tax cuts for lower income households?
2. How can government borrowing drive up interest rates, and why is this a concern to policy makers deciding on the size of a fiscal stimulus package?
3. What are the animal spirits the article mentions? Where have you heard this expression before?
4. Do you think borrowing trillions of dollars and spending it to put people back to work and try to dig the US economy out of recession is wise, or should the US government be practicing better fiscal responsibility?

World Economic Forum – Latest Press Releases

The World Economic Forum, a group of researchers, leaders, educators, entrepreneurs and others with a vested interest in global economic performance, assembles an annual list of the world’s nations ranked according to “competitiveness”. This year, for the first time ever, the United States does not top this list, instead, Switzerland has been promoted to the status of global competitiveness leader.

What does this ranking really mean?

Competitive economies are those that have in place factors driving the productivity enhancements on which their present and future prosperity is built. A competitiveness-supporting economic environment can help national economies to weather business cycle downturns and ensure that the mechanisms enabling solid economic performance going into the future are in place.”

Competitivness means a nation posesses an evnvironment that leads to improvements in the productivity of its resources, most importantly labor. America, with record budget deficits, in the trillions of dollars, faces a future of tight budgets financed by government borrowing, which eventually means higher taxes and less ability for government to spend on public goods like education and health.

America’s demotion in the rankings is attributable to falling expectations about the country’s future growth potential rather than concerns about its current economic slowdown. Switzerland has also been in a recession for the last year, although due to targeted fiscal policies unemployment has remained low, near its level before the recession begain (around 4%).

The index used to rank countries is based on several factors:

The GCI is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness, providing a comprehensive picture of the competitiveness landscape in countries around the world at all stages of development. The pillars include Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication, and Innovation.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can a nation’s labor productivity be improved by making policies aimed at improving three of the factors measured by the GCI identified above?
2. How does America’s gigantic budget deficit ($1.8 trillion) threaten its future ability to provide its citizens with the “pillars” identified above?
3. Does economic integration with the global economy improve or limit a country’s ability to achieve economic competitiveness? Explain your answer.

Economic Growth Yet to Hit Job Market – washingtonpost.com

In AP and IB Economics, we understand the importance of macroeconomics to policymakers, whose primary macroeconomic goal is growth. Economic Growth, defined as an increase in a nation’s total output of goods and service (and therefore the national income), is desidred not only for the sake of growth itself (producing more stuff requires more resources, and may not necessarily make the average citizen better off), rather growth is needed in order to achieve full-employment of a nation’s labor force.

Growth is good. This tenet of economics is rooted in two basic observations: 1. Growth leads to an improvement in the average standard living of a nation’s people, and 2. Growth is needed to employ the growing workforce of a nation experiencing population growth and immigration.

America’s work force is a diverse group of people of all skill levels. 150 million strong, the nation’s workforce requires a healthy national economy with strong investment and consumption to maintain enough jobs to keep unemployment low.   In the last two years, however, the prospect of employment in America has diminished as the number of people out of work has grown to nearly 15 million.

Involuntary unemployment is perhaps the most serious cost of an economic slowdown. A willing and able worker (or 15 million of them!), skilled in mind and body, unable to find prouductive work, represents a monumental failure of a nation’s economy. Policies aimed at promoting growth are in fact aimed at creating employment.

The costs of unemployment affect not only the unlucky  individuals who have have lost their job. Social costs include increased crime and poverty, psychological costs include stress, anxiety, loss of self-image and depression. The economic costs are myriad. Unemployed workers become dependent on the rest of society for support, in one way or another. Benefits for the unemployed payed by the government require greater budget deficits or increased tax burden on the employed. The large pool of jobless citizens seeking work puts downward pressure on the wages of those still working, as employers find it difficult to keep paying high wages while demand for their products has fallen and millions of job seekers are willing to work for less.

The families and friends to whom unemployed workers turn for help find their already stretched incomes spread even thinner. Without steady incomes, the unemployed consume less, putting further strain on an already depressed economy. Deflation can result from unemployment, which can lead to futher layoffs by pessimistic firms, excacerbating the situation and plunging the economy into what’s known as a deflationary spiral.

For all the reasons above, policymakers strive to promote growth. When monetary policy fails to incite spending, the government must pick up the slack, hence the stimulus package so discussed in America today. China’s stimulus of over $500 billion (twice that of the US, as a percentage of its GDP) has had a positive effect on both GDP and the job market.

Employment levels in China began to recover over the past three months in the latest evidence of the rapid rebound in the economy from the international financial crisis as a result of heavy public investment.

Yin Weimin, China’s labour minister, said there had been a modest increase in the number of jobs in the economy during June, July and August, reversing the sharp slump in employment which began last October.

America’s stimlus has also begun to restore growth, but the rise in employment has so far not occured:

Despite an emerging economic expansion, businesses were sufficiently skittish about the future that the job market continued its long, steep decline in August, according to a new government report Friday. The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, from 9.4 percent, as employers shed jobs for the 20th straight month, the Labor Department said.

“Our clients tell us they will not hire in anticipation

of a recovery, but will wait until they see it,” said Jonas Prising, an executive vice president at Manpower, the giant employment services firm. “In a normal recession, people would now start to feel more comfortable and start hiring, but nobody is doing that today. They’ll do it when they see real orders and real business.”

The “silver lining” of the latest unemployment figures is hardly encouraging. The rise in unemployment is not as sharp as over most of the last year. In other words, workers are definitely worse off, but not as badly as they could have been if things were as dismal as they were earlier this year.

While the unemployment rate, as seen on the graph to the right, has risen almost every month since August of 2008, the rate at which the rate has increased has begun to slow. In other words, the economy is probably close to “bottoming out”.

The tally of lost jobs now stands at 6.9 million since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. But the rate of job losses has been declining, if haltingly, since winter. The 216,000 jobs eliminated in August is down from 276,000 cut in July and a peak of 741,000 lost in January.

Here’s what I find most interesting from in the current data. The unemployment rate’s recent rise may actually be a sign that the economy is beginning to recover. Recovery means growth in output, which should mean less unemployment. However, if workers who have been unemployed for a long time, and have therefore stop seeking employment suddenly feel more optimistic about the prospects of getting a job and begin seeking work again, then the nation’s unemployment rate actually rises! How’s that for “silver lining”? The 216,000 additional people added to the list of unemployed may have already been out of work but since they were notactively seeking employment they were not included in last month’s data.

The tricky thing about macroeconomic policy is this:  Monetary and fiscal policies can put billions of dollars into the nation’s banks and households’ and firms’ pockets through tax breaks, government bailouts, subsidies, infrastructure spending and “troubled asset swaps”… but all the money and income in the world will not lead the nation towards full-employment unless the nation’s consumers and producers feel confident. I teach my students that national income is made up of the sum of wages, interest, rent and profit; its spending consists of consumption, investment, government spending and net exports… but without the “big C” of confidence, expansionary policies aimed at increasing employment will come to nought. Confidence, according to John Maynard Keynes, is an animal spirit, a trait of humans beyond the assumption of rational behavior. Until confidence is restored, America’s output and employment levels will remain low.

Fidelity Investments – Inflation: A Threat or Not? by Dirk Hofschire

I was surprised to receive an email from the company that manages my personal investments directing me to an article that I would be able to use in class. But this analysis by a vice president of Fidelity Investments offers and excellent, concise examination of the threat posed by inflation in America today. I will use excerpts from the article and present the ideas in a graphical form to help students better understand the situation faced by the US as it struggles to emerge from its deep recession.

Hofschire sets out to answer four questions about inflation:

1. Is inflation accelerating?
2. Why is higher inflation expected?
3. Why hasn’t inflation occurred yet?
4. When will inflation return?
5. How high will inflation go?

1. Is in flation accellerating:

In short, NO.

In June, the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) declined 1.2% (on a year-over-year basis), representing the biggest fall in prices since 1950.1 Much of the decline is attributable to the steep drop in energy prices over the past year, which may reverse itself in the second half of 2009 if crude-oil prices remain near current levels. However, core CPI—which excludes food and energy—was less than 1.8% in June, demonstrating little inflationary pressure in general

A combination of weak aggregate demand and low resource costs for firms has kept price levels down.  While total spending has falling (leftward shift of AD), firms’ costs of production have fallen (rightward shift of AS). Since total output fell we can see that national income (Y) is less in 2009 than in 2008. Since price level has fallen, we can see deflation.

Diagram 1:

2. Why is higher inflation expected?

With little evidence of economic strength or cost-push inflation today, the concern now is that the monetarist economic view of the world sees inflation clouds on the horizon. The godfather of modern monetarist economic thought, Milton Friedman, once stated, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” What Friedman meant was that money—specifically changes in the supply and use of currency—was the primary driver for changes to price levels in an economy. Friedman informally defined inflation as “too much money chasing too few goods and services.” As a result, an excessive increase in the amount or use of money relative to economic output is the textbook prescription for inflation.

The inflation described above, and feared by Friedman and today’s monetarists is not of the cost-push type, rather the demand-pull variety. As the vast quantities of money injected by the US Fed work their way through the banking system and into the pockets of consumers and the hands of firm managers, eventually demand for America’s goods and services will rise. But in the current recession, the production of those goods and services has stagnated, meaning that once all this money starts getting spent, the competition among buyers for the limited output of producers will drive prices up.

Diagram 2:

3. Why hasn’t inflation occurred yet?

…there remains considerable downward pressure on prices still in place, due to growing slack in the economy (i.e. underutilized resources, such as labor) and continued deleveraging by consumers and financial firms with heavy debt loads. With the unemployment rate at its highest level in 26 years and consumers saving more and spending less, there is little upward pressure on wages or prices for consumer goods.

Yes, the money supply has increased, which according to our answer to number 2 should lead to inflation. But not if the new money isn’t being spent! Banks with money from the Fed are holding onto their excess reserves instead of loaning them out, due to a prevailing lack of confidence in borrowers ability to repay loans during these hard economic times. If all the money the Central Bank is injecting in the economy is sitting idle, and resources such as labor, land and capital are under-employed, then there is little fear of cost-push nor demand-pull inflation.  Diagram 1 illustrates why inflation hasn’t occured yet.

The excess bank reserves thus represent both the potential for future inflation as well as the explanation for why rapid money growth has yet to create current inflation.

In short, money must be spent to drive inflation up. When households prefer savings to consumption and banks prefer liquidity to risk, inflation is only a distant fear.

4. When will inflation return?

Interestingly, the answer to this question can be summed up as: “hopefully sooner rather than later”. Despite popular belief, some inflation is considered a positive sign of economic growth. Just as deflation is the purveyor of doom and gloom (unemployment, uncertainty, low consumer and investor confidence, credit crunch, etc) inflation is a sign of health returning to the economy (improved confidence, rising employment, looser credit markets, expectations of future growth). Central Bankers like Bernanke will surely be showered with praise, while congressman will be quick to give credit to the fiscal stimulus package.

Whether the pick-up in money velocity leads to significantly higher inflation depends on how quickly the Fed pulls the reins back on the extraordinary credit it is currently providing. In theory, the Fed can take actions to reduce the size of its balance sheet and move back to a more appropriate level of money. In practice, due to the unprecedented expansion in the Fed’s balance sheet, this will be a challenge.

Just as it was the Fed’’s and government’s job to get the party started through expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, it is equally important for policymakers to calm the party down should the level of inflation begin to rise.

Diagram 3:

5. How high will inflation go?

Given the high level of slack (i.e. underutilized resources) likely to remain in the economy during the next two years, there also could be offsetting deflationary pressures lingering in the system. For example, the unemployment rate is expected to rise above 10% and not peak until sometime in 2010. Industrial capacity utilization rates are at their lowest level on record, which means a lot of unused capacity in the manufacturing sector. This slack must tighten considerably before upward pressure is placed on wages and other prices.

As a result of this downward pressure on wages, which remain the largest expense for corporations, it would appear a 1970s-style, double-digit inflation outburst remains unlikely in the short to medium term. Average weekly earnings for U.S. workers rose more than 7% annually during the period from 1975-1981 in which consumer price inflation averaged more than 9% and peaked at 14% in 1980.5 It is hard to foresee wage gains of that magnitude reinforcing inflation pressures during the next couple of years.

The 1970’s was a period of high inflation in the US, caused primarily by higher costs for firms rather than increasing demand for output. This “cost-push” inflation is unlikely to occur in today’s climate due to the high levels of unemployment and under-employment of labor, land and capital resources. This does not mean inflation won’t happen, just that it’s unlikely to look like the cost-push variety of the 1970’s.

Diagram 4:

Harvard Economist Niall Ferguson appeared on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria over the weekend. Ferguson has stood out among mainstream economists lately in his opposition to the US fiscal stimulus package, an $880 billion experiment in expansionary Keynesian policy. While economists like Paul Krugman argue that Obama’s plan is not big enough to fill America’s “recessionary gap”, Ferguson warns that the long-run effects of current and future US budget deficits could lead the US towards economic collapse. This blog post will attempt to explain Ferguson’s views in a way that high school economics students can understand.

Government spending in the US is projected to exceed tax revenues by $1.9 trillion this year, and trillions more over the next four years. An excess of spending beyond tax revenue is known as a budget deficit, and must be paid for by government borrowing. Where does the government get the funds to finance its deficits? The bond market. The core of Ferguson’s concerns about the future stability of the United States economy is the situation in the market for US government bonds. According to Ferguson:

One consequence of this crisis has been an enormous explosion in government borrowing, and the US federal deficit… is going to be equivelant to 1.9 trillion dollars this year alone, which is equivelant to nearly 13% of GDP… this is an excessively large deficit, it can’t all be attributed to stimulus, and there’s a problem. The problem is that the bond market… is staring at an incoming tidal wave of new issuance… so the price of 10-year treasuries, the standard benchmark government bond… has taken quite a tumble in the past year, so long-term interest rates, as a result, have gone up by quite a lot. That poses a problem, since part of the project in the mind of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is to keep interest rates down“

There’s a lot of information in Ferguson’s statements above. To better understand him, some graphs could come in handy. Below is a graphical representation of the US bond market, which is where the US government supplies bonds, which are purchased by the public, commercial banks, and foreigners. Keep in mind, the demanders of US bonds are the lenders to the US government, which is the borrower. The price of a bond represents the amount the government receives from its lenders from the issuance of a new bond certificate. The yield on a bond represents the interest the lender receives from the government. The lower the price of a bond, the higher the yield, the more attractive bonds are to investors. Additionally, the lower the price of bonds, the greater the yield, thus the greater the amount of interest the US government must pay to attract new lenders.

Ferguson says that the price of US bonds has “taken a tumble”. The increase of supply has lowered bond prices, increasing their attractiveness to investors who earn higher interest on the now cheaper bonds. Below we can see the impact of an increase in the quantity demanded for government bonds on the market for private investment.

Financial crowding-out can occur as a result of deficit financed government spending as the nation’s financial resources are diverted out of the private sector and into the public sector. Granted, during a recession the demand for loanable funds from firms for private investment may be so low that there is no crowding out, as explained by Paul Krugman here.

But crowding out is not Ferguson’s only concern. The increase in interest rates caused by the US government’s issuance of new bonds could lead to a decrease in private investment in the US economy, inhibiting the nation’s long-run growth potential. But the bigger concern is one of America’s long-run economic stability. If the Obama administration does not put forth a viable plan for balancing its budget very soon, the demand for US government bonds could fall, which would further excacerbate the crowding-out effect, and eliminate the country’s ability to finance its government activities. In other words, such a loss of faith could plunge the United States into bankruptcy.

Fareed Zakaria asks Ferguson:

“Is it fair to say that this bad news, the fact that we can’t sell our debt as cheaply as we thought, overshadows all the good news that seems to be coming?”

Ferguson’s reply:

The green shoots that are out there (referring to the phrase economists and politicians have been using to describe the signs of recovery in the US economy) seem like tiny little weeds in the garden, and what’s coming in terms of the fiscal crisis in the United States is a far bigger and far worse story.

Finally Fareed asks the question everyone wants to know:”What the hell do we do?”

Ferguson:

One thing that can be done very quickly is for the president to give a speech to the American people and to the world explaining how the administration proposes to achieve stabilization of American public finance… the administration doesn’t have that long a honeymoon period, it has very little time in which it can introduce the American public to some harsh realities, particularly about entitlements and how much they are going to cost. If a signal could be sent really soon to the effect that the administration is serious about fiscal stabilization and isn’t planning on borrowing another $10 trillion between now and the end of the decade, then just conceivably markets could be reassured.

Ferguson is saying that only if the Obama administration begins taking serious steps towards balancing the US government’s budget can it hope to stave off an eventual loss of faith among America’s creditors (and thus a fall in demand for US bonds). It will be a while before tax revenues are high enough to finance the US budget. But if the country does not begin working towards such an end immediately, it may find itself unable to raise the funds to pay for such public goods as infrastructure, education, health care, national defense, medical research, as well as the wages of the millions of government employees. In other words, the US government could be bankrupt, and its downfall could mean the end of American economic power.

The power of the bond market should not be underestimated. America’s very future depends on continued faith in its financial stability and fiscal responsibility.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think the US government has such a huge budget deficit this year? ($1.9 trillion) Previously, the largest budget deficit on record was only around $400 billion.
2. How does the issuance of new bonds by the US government lead to less money being available to private households and firms?
3. Do you think investors will ever totally lose faith in US government bonds? Why or why not?
4. In what way is the government’s huge budget deficit a “tax on teenagers”? In other words, how will today’s teenagers end up suffering because of the federal budget deficit?

To learn more about the power of the bond market, watch Niall Ferguson’s documentary, The Ascent of Money. The section on the bond market can be viewed here:

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look – washingtonpost.com

Here in Switzerland I enjoy the luxury of having to pay a relatively small federal income tax of 9.6%. In the US, at my current income level, I would be paying a 25% federal income tax. On the other hand, everything I buy here in Switzerland, from food to clothes to train tickets and bike parts, costs me an additional 7.6% of value added tax. If a product is imported, chances are there is also an additional 20% import tariff. In other words, what I save coming in (because of the low direct tax) I lose going out (through high indirect taxes).

The incentive, therefore, is to save as much of my income as possible. I shop much less than I would in the US where indirect taxes are much lower, but when I do shop prices are much higher. Much of Switzerland’s government revenue comes from the value added tax and other indirect taxes, which means households keep much more of their earned income.

In the United States, where the government has not seen a balanced budget since 2001, there has been much talk about creating a national sales tax to help raise revenue to pay for many of the social plans that the Obama administration wants to pursue, such as national health care. VATs and sales taxes are regressive, which means more of the tax burden is born by low income households compared with high a direct, income tax, which is progressive, meaning the higher a household’s income, the greater percentage it pays. But with budget shortfalls expected to reach $4 trillion over the next four years, new sources of tax revenue are needed.

“Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we’re going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate,” said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. “It’s common to the rest of the world, and we don’t have it.”

The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation’s money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it’s all about the money.

To counter claims that a national sales tax is regressive, advocates point out that such a tax would allow the federal government to lower income tax rates for low income Americans, giving them more disposable income to spend on goods and services, which would be more expensive because of the VAT.

Another option the government should consider is a tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, Obama is advocating a carbon permit market, which would be less effective at generating income for the government as permits, once they are issued or auctioned to industry, are bought and sold by firms, creating revenue for companies and not the government. A carbon tax, on the other hand, would create new tax revenue for the federal government and help reduce the negative externalities causing global warming and encourage development of alternative “green” methods of production.

In the short-term, it is unlikely that the US government will legislate any significant new taxes. Carbon taxes have been ignored by the Obama administration and Congress, under the argument that during a recession any new tax on industry might just break the nation’s manufacturing and energy sectors’ backs. A VAT is just as unpopular, for the reason that any policy raising consumer prices puts even greater burden on already strapped household incomes. Tradeable carbon permits are popular for the reason that they appear to be a “market based” approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; but Congress is talking about putting a price ceiling on carbon permits of $28 per ton, a price at which the incentives to reduce emissions among firms is minimal.

America’s long period of strong growth, low savings, and deficit financed government spending will necessitate belt-tightening in the near future as ultimately the government will have to start financing its budgets through tax revenues, not the issuing of new debt. Carbon taxes, higher marginal income taxes, or a national sales tax are all options the Obama administration can choose from. For now, it appears it’s choosing none of these, and instead selling more bonds to the public, foreigners, and the Fed, increasing the moneys supply in the hope that households and firms begin spending once more. The path towards fiscal discipline is a hard one to get started on, especially during a recession when no new taxes are politically viable.

Discussion Questions:

1. What make’s a sales tax regressive if everyone has to pay, say, 10% on top of the regular sales price of a good or service?
2. How does the US government finance its massive budgets when its revenue from taxes don’t even come close to equaling the amount of spending?
3. Why is it important for a country, in the long-run, to achieve a balnced budget?
4. What would you prefer to do: pay a higher income tax or a higher sales tax? What are the pros and cons of direct versus indirect taxes?

A.P. Economics vs. Real Life – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com

Econ Exams: Are The Correct Answers Still Right? : NPR

Listen to the 3 minute NPR podcast here

It’s interesting to me that AP Economics has gotten two major mentions in the mainstream media recently, both asking the same question: Does high school Economics teach kids about the real world anymore?

Both the New York Times and NPR refer to a past AP Macro multiple choice question, this one from the NYT:

Policy makers concerned about fostering long-run growth in an economy that is currently in a recession would most likely recommend which of the following combinations of monetary and fiscal policy actions?
MONETARY POLICY…/…FISCAL POLICY
a. sell bonds…/…reduce taxes
b. sell bonds…/…raise taxes
c. no change…/…raise taxes
d. buy bonds…/…reduce spending
e. buy bonds…/…no change

The correct answer, as readers should know, is e. Buying bonds increases the money supply and lowers interest rates, while choosing not to engage in expansionary fiscal policy means no crowding out of private investment will occur and thus “fostering long-run growth” in the economy.

The NYT blogger writes:

But that answer does not even remotely resemble what policy makers have actually done in response to the current crisis (or, for that matter, in response to previous recessions).

It’s true, the severity of the current recession has forced the government and Fed to create new monetary and fiscal tricks, but the fundamentals behind a response indicated in answer e. still hold true. Lowering interest rates to encourage private investment is a pro-growth policy for correcting a mild recession.

Anyway, I think it’s worth listening to the podcast from NPR and reading the blog post from the NYT. Definitely read the comments on the blog post too, some interesting points are made by readers.

 Other Media: Download

Liquidity preference, loanable funds, and Niall Ferguson (wonkish) – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

Below is the loanable funds market at its current equilibrium, according to Krugman (I is investment demand for funds, S is the supply of loanable funds):

In Krugman’s words:

In effect, we have an incipient excess supply of savings even at a zero interest rate. And that’s our problem.

So what does government borrowing do? It gives some of those excess savings a place to go — and in the process expands overall demand, and hence GDP. It does NOT crowd out private spending, at least not until the excess supply of savings has been sopped up, which is the same thing as saying not until the economy has escaped from the liquidity trap.

In AP Macroeconomics, we teach that deficit-financed government expenditure decreases the supply of loanable funds as savers take their money out of commercial banks and invest in the bond market due to the attractive interest rates on government debt. Less funds available for the private sector drives up interest rates and crowds out private investment.

If the economy is producing close to the full-employment level and interest rates are positive, the decrease in supply of loanable funds can indeed drive up equilibrium interest rates and lead to the “crowding-out” of private investment. Krugman points out in this article that when the economy is at the “zero-bound” (i.e. when nominal interest rates are as low as they can go) and the quantity supplied of savings is still greater than the quantity demanded for investment, the government can effectively borrow from the public, decreasing the supply and correcting the surplus of savings without driving up interest rates in the private market. Put another way, the equilibrium interest rate is below zero, but the “zero-bound” acts as a price floor in the loanable funds market, resulting in a surplus of savings.

Government borrowing crowding out private investment is not something we can worry about during a recession, when low confidence and expectations have driven the supply of savings up and the demand for investment down. Public spending will divert funds from the private sector to the public sector, that’s true. But in today’s case, savings are sitting idle in the private sector, so government borrowing is putting those fund to use when the private sector has failed to do so.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does the supply of loanable funds (S in the graph above) slope upwards? Why does the demand for loanable funds (I in the graph) slope downwards?
2. Deficit financed government spending decreases the supply of loanable funds. Why?
3. Crowding-out is not the only possible down-side of deficit spending by the government. What are some other long-term effects of governments running budget deficits year after year?

The Fed should focus on deflation | The greater of two evils | The Economist

Deflation: a decrease in the general price level of goods and services of an economy. Sounds great, right? Lower prices mean the purchasing power of our income increases, making the “average” person richer! On the surface, it could be concluded that deflation may actually be a good thing. And in some cases, it is!

If prices of goods are falling because of major technological advances (think of the price of cell phones and laptop computers over the last 20 years) or because of massive improvements in the productivity of labor and capital (think of the price of manufactured consumer goods during the Industrial Revolution), then deflation could be considered a sign of healthy economic growth. Put in terms an IB or AP Economics student should understand, a fall in prices caused by an increase in a nation’s aggregate supply is good, since it is accompanied by greater levels of employment and higher real incomes. But if the fall in prices is caused by a decline in spending in the economy (in other words, by a decrease in aggregate demand), the consequences can be catastrophic.

It just so happens that the United States, Great Britain, and my own home of Switzerland are all faced with demand-deficient deflation at this very moment. I’ll allow the Economist to elaborate:

…With unemployment nearing 9% (in the United States), economic output is further below the economy’s potential than at any time since 1982. This gap is likely to widen. House prices are not part of America’s inflation index but their decline is forcing households to reduce debt , which could subdue economic growth for years. As workers compete for scarce jobs and firms underbid each other for sales, wages and prices will come under pressure.

So far, expectations of inflation remain stable: that sentiment is itself a welcome bulwark against deflation. But pay freezes and wage cuts may soon change people’s minds. In one poll, more than a third of respondents said they or someone in their household had suffered a cut in pay or hours…

Does this matter? If prices are falling because of advancing productivity, as at the end of the 19th century, it is a sign of progress, not economic collapse. Today, though, deflation is more likely to resemble the malign 1930s sort than that earlier benign variety, because demand is weak and households and firms are burdened by debt. In deflation the nominal value of debts remains fixed even as nominal wages, prices and profits fall. Real debt burdens therefore rise, causing borrowers to cut spending to service their debts or to default. That undermines the financial system and deepens the recession.

From 1929 to 1933 prices fell by 27%. This time central banks are on the case. In America, Britain, Japan and Switzerland they have pushed short-term interest rates to, or close to, zero…

…inflation is easier to put right than deflation. A central bank can raise interest rates as high as it wants to suppress inflation, but it cannot cut nominal rates below zero… In the worst case, rising debts and defaults depress growth, poisoning the economy by deepening deflation and pressing real interest rates higher….Given the choice, erring on the side of inflation would be less catastrophic than erring on the side of deflation.

Discussion Questions:

1. Deflation poses several threats to an economy that is otherwise fundamentally healthy, such as the United States’. What are some the threats posed by deflation?
2. The expectation of future deflation can have as equally devastating effect. Why is this?
3. What evidence does the article put forth that an economy experiencing deflation may eventually “self-correct”, meaning return to the full employment level of output in the long-run?
4. Why don’t governments and central banks just sit back and let the economy self-correct? In other words, why are fiscal and monetary policies being used so aggressively by the US, Great Britain and Switzerland during this economic crisis?

Deflation or Inflation:Watch the video below, see if gives you any clues as to the causes and effects of deflation. What do you think John Maynard Keynes would say in response to the deflationary fears expressed in the Economist article?

Help Wanted: Why That Sign’s Bad – BusinessWeek

This week’s cover story in Business Week magazine tells an interesting story about unemployment in America. Listen to the podcast or follow the link above to read more of this story:

 

 Help Wanted: Why That Sign's Bad: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Surprising statistic: In the midst of the worst recession in a generation or more, with 13 million people unemployed, there are approximately 3 million jobs that employers are actively recruiting for but so far have been unable to fill. That’s more job openings than the entire population of Mississippi.

Sound like good news? It’s not. Instead, it’s evidence of an emerging structural shift in the U.S. economy that has created serious mismatches between workers and employers. People thrown out of shrinking sectors such as construction, finance, and retail lack the skills and training for openings in growing fields including education, accounting, health care, and government. At the same time, the worst housing bust in decades has left the unemployed frozen in place. They can’t move to get work because they can’t sell their homes.

In IB and AP Economics we teach that there are three types of unemployment an economy may experience, ranked roughly in order from the least undesirable to the most undesirable (from a macroeconomic perspective):

• Frictional unemployment: This accounts for people who are “in between jobs” or fresh out of college looking for their first jobs.
• Structural unemployment: This is caused by the changing structure of an economy. As America’s manufacturing sector shrinks and its education and health care sectors grown, those whose skills lie in manufacturing become structurally unemployed.
• Cyclical unemployment: This is also called “demand-deficient” unemployment because it is caused by a fall in aggregate demand or overall spending in the economy.

America today is clearly experiencing all three types, but due to the particular circumstances of the recession, the American worker is finding it it harder than ever to match his skills with an appropriate job. Below are some of the industries with the most and the fewest job openings today:

Most openings:

• Education
• Health care
• Government
• Energy (such as wind, oil, natural gas)
• “Analytics” (i.e. business data analysis by firms such as IBM)

Fewest openings:

• Construction
• Manufacturing

Unfortunately for the large numbers of unemployed construction and factory workers, the kinds of skills required to work in the fields with the most job openings are prohibitively different from those learned in their previous industries. In addition to a mismatch of skills between the industries in which jobs are being lost and those in which labor is in demand, there is also a geographic mismatch in the labor market. Below are the states with the least and the most job openings:

Most job vacancies (states with large energy sectors: oil, natural gas and windmills)

• North Dakota
• Wyoming

Least job vacancies (states with large manufacturing and construction sectors)

• North Carolina
• California
• Michigan

Historically, the geographic factor has not posed an issue to American workers, and when jobs opened up in one part of the country, Americans would pack up and move where necessary to find work. Today, however, with the collapse of house prices, more and more Americans find themselves stuck with a house they can’t sell in a part of the country where they can’t find a job.

To paraphrase the podcast above, “the US in danger of looking like Europe. The European job market has been described as ’sclerotic’; people don’t respond to want ads because of the generous long-term unemployment benefits offered by European governments. Europeans have historically been geographically immobile due to nationalist ties to their home countries.” Today, the US job market reflects some of the same “sclerosis” as that of Europe.

America is facing the perfect storm of unemployment. At the same time that the economy is undergoing its most significant structural change since the Industrial Revolution brought millions of American workers from the farm fields into factories, it is facing the most significant decline in private sector spending (consumption, investment and exports) since the great depression. Put this together with the relative immobility of the American worker caused by the housing crisis, and unemployment has climbed to its highest level in three decades.

This interesting story ends with a glimmer of hope for the American worker:

To fight this sclerosis, the White House is using $3.5 billion of the stimulus for training, while boosting support for community colleges. Classes for factory workers seeking entry-level health-care careers have shown some success.

The truth is, displaced workers may have to move down a few rungs as they switch careers because their skills are irrelevant in their new roles… Many laid-off Wall Street financial engineers still haven’t absorbed that, says Fred Wilson, a partner in Union Square Ventures, a New York venture capital firm. “For them to take a job that pays a lot less, they have to make a meaningful change in their lifestyle. And that is an issue.”

Employers need to bend as well, recognizing that the candidates they’re seeking may not exist. Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXRoads, a staffing strategy consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J., tells employers: “You’re hiring potential….You’ve got to train them.”

A mismatch of work and workers is never a good thing. But smart policy—combined with realism on the part of employers and job seekers—can minimize the disruption.

Discussion Questions:

1. In what way may structural unemployment be a sign of a healthy economy, rather than a sick one?
2. Part of the Obama stimulus package includes increased benefits for unemployed Americans. How may this pose an obstacle to reducing unemployment in America?
3. Historically, the natural rate of unemployment in most European economies has been higher than that of the United States. Why is this?
4. Do you think America’s NRU will return to its historic level (4-6%) when the economy eventually recovers from the current crisis? Why or why not?

Economic View – A Dose of Skepticism on Government Spending – NYTimes.com

We all understand that fiscal stimulus is one of the tools that governments can use to increase the level of economic activity during a recession. The fiscal medicine can be delivered in one of two ways. The government can tweak the tax systems to boost incentives to spend and work or it can increase government spending. One tool that we can use to evaluate the merits of these two policies is to compare the relative multipliers that relate to government spending and taxation.

The multiplier is the key component of Keynesian theory and shows the possibility of a given increase in injections, e.g. government spending, investment and exports, increasing aggregate demand by more than the initial value. This logic fits with our understanding of the circular flow where say increased government spending will lead to increased derived demand for other products, and increased demand for labour. Workers will spend additional wages on other products which leads to further increases in aggregate demand. This flow on effect can be diluted by withdrawals from the system such as taxation or savings.

Greg Mankiw wrote an excellent analysis of this issue in the New York Times in Janurary. “A dose of skepticism on government spending”

An essential skill for IB and AP Economics students is to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of Keynesian  demand-side policies as well as classical supply-side policies, both fiscal and monetary. An understanding of multipliers can improve a student’s ability to evaluate fiscal policy. Greg writes:

“Economics textbooks, including Mr. Samuelson’s and my own more recent contribution, teach that each dollar of government spending can increase the nation’s gross domestic product by more than a dollar. When higher government spending increases G.D.P., consumers respond to the extra income they earn by spending more themselves. Higher consumer spending expands aggregate demand further, raising the G.D.P. yet again. And so on. This positive feedback loop is called the multiplier effect.

In practice, however, the multiplier for government spending is not very large. The best evidence comes from a recent study by Valerie A. Ramey, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. Based on the United States’ historical record, Professor Ramey estimates that each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by only 1.4 dollars. So, by doing the math, we find that when the G.D.P. expands, less than a third of the increase takes the form of private consumption and investment.”

This low multiplier effect implies that any government spending must be used in an effective manner where it will increase the long-term productivity of the country. During a “jobs think-tank” recently in New Zealand, a media release announced an idea of the government spending a vast sum of money to develop a walking track from one end of the country to the other. Would this lead to increased tourism? How much money would these hiking visitors spend? Would it create more jobs?

Should we therefore expect that tax cuts will lead to a greater increase in GDP through the feedback loop compared to government spending? Well, we have to remember that not all tax cuts will be spent immediately, according to the marginal propensity to consume. In a recession some workers will be pessimistic about the future and save the money. Will tax cuts compensate workers who are working shorter hours? Greg suggests that tax cuts might actually be more potent than government spending according to current research.

“Textbook Keynesian theory says that tax cuts are less potent than spending increases for stimulating an economy. When the government spends a dollar, the dollar is spent. When the government gives a household a dollar back in taxes, the dollar might be saved, which does not add to aggregate demand.

The evidence, however, is hard to square with the theory. A recent study by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, then economists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3. According to the Romers, the multiplier for tax cuts is more than twice what Professor Ramey finds for spending increases.

Why this is so remains a puzzle. One can easily conjecture about what the textbook theory leaves out, but it will take more research to sort things out. And whether these results based on historical data apply to our current extraordinary circumstances is open to debate.”

So the current research indicates that one-dollar of tax cuts can increase G.D.P by $3 compared to an additional dollar of government spending increasing GDP by $1.40. But why is there such a large difference? Is this related to the arguments about the efficiency of increased government spending? The verdict is still out and we may need to wait till the next global recession to find out.

Below is a picture of the aptly named Bridge to Nowhere located in the central North Island of New Zealand. It was built by the government in a spending splurge in the 1936 to open up land in the area. The land is now no longer fertile or accessible and all access to the area is cut off except for this concrete relic. The area is now popular with trampers.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do economists calculate the multiplier?
2. What are leakages from the circular flow that reduce the multiplier effect?
3. Explain the link between the accelerator model and the multiplier.
4. What would multipliers for other injections such as export receipts or investment look like? Would they be higher or lower than multipliers for taxation or government spending?
5. Evaluate the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus to increase the level of economic activity.

From today’s New York Times:

Just How Progressive Is the Tax System? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com

Not as much as you might think. So says Citizens for Tax Justice, which today released an updated analysis of the effective tax rates for Americans at different income levels.

Data released last week by the Congressional Budget Office underscored the progressive nature of the federal tax system. And in an op-ed article today in The Wall Street Journal, Ari Fleischer, who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, used that data — in particular, the income tax numbers — to argue that the wealthiest Americans bear an unfair share of the tax burden. Other research has found that many states and local governments have more regressive tax systems, though, that might offset the progressiveness of federal tax rates.

The research from Citizens for Tax Justice — a liberal organization that advocates “fair taxes for middle and low-income families” — uses 2008 data for all federal, state and local taxes combined. It found that the average effective tax rate is 29.8 percent, and that including state and local taxes makes the tax curve look much less steep:

Horizontal axis shows the income group. Vertical axis shows the percentage of income that the average member of that group pays in taxes. Taxes include all federal, state and local taxes (personal and corporate income, payroll, property, sales, excise, estate, etc.). Incomes include cash income, employer-paid FICA taxes and corporate profits net of taxable dividends.

The group also finds that in 2008 the share of total federal, state and local taxes paid by each income group was relatively close to the share of income that that group brings in, at least as compared to comparable 2006 numbers for effective federal tax rates:

Horizontal axis shows the income group. Taxes include all federal, state and local taxes (personal and corporate income, payroll, property, sales, excise, estate, etc.). Incomes include cash income, employer-paid FICA taxes and corporate profits net of taxable dividends.

Discussion questions:

1. Based on the data above, do the rich in America pay an unfair proportion of the total taxes the US government collects? Why or why not?
2. Why do the richest 5% in America actually pay a lower level of tax on average than the 5% below them?
3. How much of America’s total income is earned by the richest 1% compared to the poorest 20%? Does America’s progressive tax system destroy the incentive for Americans to work hard and become rich? Why or why not?
4. Does the gap between the richest and the poorest Americans surprise you? Do you think that America’s tax system is effective at re-distributing the nation’s income? How does it succeed? How could it do better?

Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Taxes

The following was published in the Chicago Tribune’s “Voice of the People” page on October 29, 2008 in the midst of the US presidential race:

Redistributing wealth
On my way to lunch recently, I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read “Vote Obama; I need the money.” I laughed. In a restaurant my server had on an “Obama 08″ tie. Again I laughed. Just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Barack-Obama-redistribution-of-wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

—A. Hart, Forest Park

The comment reflects a general contempt for the concept of taxation, specifically progressive taxes, or those that tax high income earners at a higher rate than those who earn low incomes. The idea behind a progressive tax, of course, is that higher income earners have income left over after they have provided themselves with the necessities of life, therefore should bear a larger burden of the nation’s tax revenue, which thereby enables the government to “re-distribute” wealth from the nation’s higher income earners across all levels of society through the provision of public goods.

The federal income tax in the United States is progressive in that the higher one’s income, the higher the percentage he or she pays to the US government. As seen in the table below, America’s poor will pay as little as 0-10% in income tax, while the nation’s richest households can pay up to 35%.

Opponents of progressive income taxes, which are also known as direct taxes because they are taken directly from a person’s income, argue that such a tax system creates a disincentive to work among American households. They argue that progressive income taxes penalize hard work and innovation, since the higher a worker’s productivity, the more of his income he must relinquish to the government.

One commonly misunderstood fact about the US income tax, however, is that it is a marginal tax system, meaning that when a person goes from, say the 25% to the 28% bracket, he does not pay 28% on ALL of his income, only on the marginal income above  $82,250 (according to the 2009 column above).  The implication is, therefore, that the average tax paid by an American will at any level of income be lower than the marginal tax. Below is a graphical representation of this concept. [source: http://aufrecht.org/pictures/images/858554/tax400.png]

It is the re-distributive intentions and effect of a progressive income tax system such as America’s (and every other country, click here to see tax rates from around the world) that has led to such intense opposition to the US tax system. Many in America’s government have proposed a “fair tax” that does away with America’s current direct tax system in favor of a nation-wide indirect, or sales tax on most goods and services. Watch the video below:

The fair tax is a indirect tax, meaning it is levied not directly on peoples’ income but indirectly on the purchase of goods and services in the economy, and is described as follows:

The sales tax rate, as defined in the legislation, is 23 percent of the total payment including the tax ($23 of every $100 spent in total—calculated similar to income taxes). This would be equivalent to a 30 percent traditional U.S. sales tax ($23 on top of every $77 spent before taxes).^[4] The effective tax rate for any household would be variable due to the fixed monthly tax rebates that are used to “untax” purchases up to the poverty level.^[3] The tax would be levied on all U.S. retail sales for personal consumption on new goods and services.

The two guests argue that the fair tax “is the only tax that totally untaxes the poor; the poor get a free ride totally across the board at the federal level under this plan.”

However, a national sales tax is a “regressive tax” meaning that as a percentage of income, the fair tax places a larger burden on lower income earners than higher income earners. An example is useful:

• Two shoppers walk into a computer store. One earns $50,000 a year, the other $100,000 a year.
• Both are looking at a computer that costs $2,000. Under the fair tax, $460 of the purchase price of this computer will go to the government as tax.
• $460 represents .92% of the income of the shopper who earns $50,000 per year.
• $460 represents .46% of the income of the shopper who earns $100,000 per year.
• The higher income earner pays a lower percentage of his income to the government in tax than the low income earner, making this a regressive tax.

One of the four macroeconomic goals governments aim to achieve in their policy making is more equal distribution of income. The fair tax, despite the arguments its advocates make, does not achieve a more equal distribution of income in America. It does place a smaller tax burden on the rich than the current system, but on the other hand America’s lower income earners bear a relatively larger burden of tax.

Discussion Questions:

1. Are taxes necessary? Why? What are some of the “public goods” tax revenues are used to provide in America and your country?
2. Discuss the claim that a progressive tax system stifles innovation, entrepreneurship and incentive to work.
3. On whom does the largest burden of a sales tax (like the fair tax) fall? Is a sales tax “fair”? Why or why not?

Two items consisting of good news from the local English language news in Switzerland. The first article says that small and medium-sized enterprises, in other words family owned businesses, are likely to come out of a global economic slowdown relatively unscathed and healthy.

Swiss SMEs are well placed to survive the economic recession. – swissinfo

Family-run firms in Switzerland are well set to survive the global recession having put long-term growth before quick profits in the good years, a report concludes.

Such small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for more than 88 per cent of all Swiss companies, are also cushioned by an aversion to taking on too much debt but still face succession problems.

The survey of 300 Swiss family-owned SMEs found that 68 per cent of companies are less motivated by making money than in maintaining the good name of the firm.

Some 83 per cent of owners put the healthy state of their company down to risk aversion and 39 per cent said long-term planning was crucial to success.

Swiss family business consultant Hakan Hillerström contributed to the study by Barclays Wealth and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Often, without a stock market listing, family businesses are insulated from the need to meet the short-term demands of investors and so are better placed to ride out volatility than their listed peers,” he said.

Second is a story about the mobility of skilled labor in Switzerland. When global demand for one of Switzerland’s most famous exports, watches, falls, Swiss watch makers are snatched up and employed by other industries in which demand is actually increasing during the recession: namely, rail car engineering and construction. Similar skills are required of workers in both industries, watches and rail cars. I suspect demand for rail cars has increased because of the multiple fiscal stimulus packages being initiated around Europe, many of which include funding for infrastructure expansion, including upgrading and expanding rail networks.

I am impressed by the flexibility of labor markets in Switzerland in times of economic hardship. Such labor mobility as demonstrated below helps Switzerland weather economic woes more easily than it would if workers laid off from one industry could not easily find employment in others, such as is the case in many countries.

Enterprises in Vaud to exchange workers to beat redundancies. – swissinfo

Skilled workers from the Swiss watchmaking industry could soon find themselves building locomotives instead.

A new project to meet the challenges posed by the financial crisis has been launched in the French-speaking canton of Vaud, with the backing of the major trade union and employers associations, as well as the cantonal government.

The idea is that businesses experiencing a temporary shortfall in orders will be able to lend their workers to others facing a shortage of labour.

“It’s pretty ridiculous to pay people to sit around and do nothing,” Yves Defferrard of the Unia trade union told swissinfo. “But when they have no work for them, employers can often think of nothing better than to lay them off. That’s the wrong way to manage a crisis. It’s what happened in the downturn of 2000.”